At 6:05 +0100 3/10/03, Alexandre Enkerli wrote:
>This is something I keep coming across, especially on the Web. A specific
>word used by one person starts to appear everywhere. The kind of word you
>know but never use, you start using in conversation after reading or
>hearing it. A fascinating phenomenon from many different points of view:
>literary, cognitive, sociolinguistic, commercial...
>Of course, I might notice it more because of the context but there's
>something to be said about words suddenly gaining frequency. And this is
>not just for catch-phrases and buzzwords. Even fairly neutral words may
>look like they tie two articles or two conversations. And they can only
>imply these two occurrences or spring into a meme-like epidemic propagation.
>Anyone working on anything like this? There's bound to be a body of
>literature on such subjects but what would be a quick summary of such
>literature?